


every me loves every you

by curtaincall



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:06:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curtaincall/pseuds/curtaincall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlets for a bunch of AU scenarios that markbrendanawitz on tumblr came up with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "AU where Ben is a stock broker on wall street and Leslie is interning in New York for the summer"

Leslie was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, fresh from some podunk town called Pawnee, Indiana, blond-haired and blue-eyed and short and perky: almost as perky as her boss, Ben’s partner, Chris Traeger. Ben himself never had interns, because they tended to be young, and young people frankly annoyed him. (This despite the fact that he himself had yet to turn thirty.) Chris loved them, though, and so Ben had learned to politely nod hello and remind them not to touch things and pretend they weren’t there. But today, Chris was sick, and even though any normal intern would have taken that opportunity to get the day off, Leslie showed up anyway.

“You won’t mind mentoring me, just for today, will you?” she asked, and her voice was so hopeful that he found himself nodding before he knew what he was doing.

And it turned out she was smart: smart and passionate and driven, and not afraid to tell Ben she thought he was a jerk, after he turned away a potential client for not being financially stable enough. And even after Chris got better, Ben still stopped by her desk every once in a while, just to say hello. Maybe, he had to admit, interns weren’t so bad after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "AU where Ben never kissed Leslie after the road trip"

Mayor Leslie Knope had a drawer in her desk that was always padlocked. If anyone were to break the lock, the contents would seem hardly worth protecting: a few newspaper clippings from the 1990s, detailing the story of another mayor, one not so successful. She didn’t know why she hung on to them. She was almost certain that her daydreams, the what-ifs that are the curse of all sensible people, placed entirely too much value on something that had never even happened. That boy in the papers was nothing more than an ideal: she didn’t love him, just the hope of what might have been if they had been just a little bit braver.

She was happy, of course. But sometimes, when she was sleeping, she dreamed of a man in plaid shirts, a man with a soft smile and a heart as large as hers. He wasn’t real, not anymore, not for her. But she couldn’t help but remember when he had almost been hers.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "AU where Ben is the high school principal and Leslie is the passionate AP government teacher"

“So,” Principal Wyatt said matter-of-factly, “we’re cutting the AP program.”

Leslie gasped. “You can’t do that! I have spent years making this program great. And you come in here and you think you can uproot it? It’s completely unfair to our students!”

“Ms. Knope, the school’s budget is shot. The previous administrators were fired because of their inability to capably manage its finances; I was brought in expressly for my expertise in cost-cutting measures. And, I’m sorry, but one of the first things to go will be AP classes.”

“Can’t you make cuts somewhere else? The library has a large budget! Take it away from them!”

“We’re slashing expenditures everywhere. Arts, athletics, facilities, it’s all being drastically reduced.”

“But why cut academics? Surely that’s the whole point of a high school? Preparing students for academic success in college and beyond?”

“Well,” said Principal Wyatt, and Leslie was more than a little disturbed to realize that he was kind of sexy saying it, “if we don’t make these cuts, the school is going to go under, and I don’t think that would be very fair to the students, either. I care about education just as much as you do: I’m just trying to be practical in how I achieve it. A less-extravagant school is better than no school at all, wouldn’t you agree?”

“All right,” Leslie said, reluctantly. “But, you hear me, the second have enough money, you’re bringing the APs back, you hear me?”

Ben Wyatt smiled. “I promise.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "AU: Professor Ben Wyatt is having an affair with his TA Leslie Knope"

“Oh, my god!” Leslie clutched the bedsheets around her naked body. “I can’t believe this! Oh, my god, what did we just do? I’m going to get in so much trouble! You’re going to get in so much trouble! We’re both going to lose our jobs, oh my god, I never break rules, how did this happen?”

Ben sat up next to her, his hair puffy and disheveled, his pale torso still exposed. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I’m the older one, I’m in the position of authority, I should have known better (well, I did know better), but I couldn’t help myself, because, God, Leslie, you’re just so--”

“It’s not worth it,” Leslie said quickly. “Of course it wasn’t worth it. Not that you weren’t good, I mean, you were great! Not that I have that much experience. Oh! Not that I have no experience. I have, you know, a normal amount of experience.”

“I believe you,” he said with a hint of a laugh in his voice. “Not that it matters.”

“Yes. Well. I, um, I hate to be unethical, but, well, it would be okay if we just didn’t tell anyone and never did it again, right?”

“That would be fine.”

“I mean, it’s not like I’m one of your students, and it’s not like I’m an undergrad, and it’s not even like you’re all that much older than me, so it’s not that bad, right? Since it was just once?”

“It was just once.”

“Okay,” Leslie said, exhaling deeply. “Okay, well, then, I’m going to go now.”

“Are you sure? Do you want, like breakfast or something? Or to take a shower? I don’t want to be an uncourteous one-night stand.”

Something in the way he said it made her wonder. “Do you want this not to be a one-night stand?”

“Calling it that makes it feel cheap. You’re not cheap. You’re wonderful.”

“You’re cute,” she said, “and wonderful. And if this were anything more than a one-night stand, then I might let myself--”

“What?”  
“Oh, I don’t want to say it, it’s so stupid.”

“Fall in love with me?”

She nodded, ducking her head down so as not to meet his eyes.

“Yeah. I’m a silly romantic kid, really, and the last thing you want is an over-attached TA who thinks because you slept together once that you’re some kind of star-crossed lovers, so, well, obviously we have to call it. It’s not worth it.”

“I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “Because if things were different, I think I could fall in love with you.”

She looked up at him again, suspecting a joke, but his face was serious. “Really?”

“Absolutely.”

“Oh, screw it,” she said, grinning, and started kissing him again.

 


End file.
